by Lette, Kathy
‘Aren’t you tired of living a life that revolves around balanced nutritional meals involving quinoa?’ I insisted, putting my hand atop Amber’s. ‘You dash from school appointment to work meeting to kids’ orthodontic check-up like your life is some kind of maternal decathlon. We all do. Yet nobody ever gives us a bronze, let alone a gold, trophy.’
‘Ruby’s right. You should be having a nervous breakdown . . . except you’d only have time for that in your lunch hour. Oh, wait, I forgot, you don’t usually take a lunch hour, do you?’ Emerald said, mopping up carbonara sauce with a chunk of bread. ‘I’m amazed you don’t just sleep in your office pantry overnight.’
‘Put yourself first . . . Just this once,’ I persisted, pressing the cruise ticket into Amber’s hand. ‘Why not?’
‘Because the guilt would kill her,’ Emerald guessed, licking the last of the cream from her lips.
‘Oh, that’s so sensitive, Emerald, really,’ Amber snapped. ‘Talking about death at a time like—’
‘Look, if your offspring complain of neglect,’ I pushed on, ‘simply point out what you’ve given up for them – uninterrupted sleep, your privacy . . .’
‘Our pelvic floors,’ Emerald added, gloomily. ‘The ability to wear a bikini – we have nipples down to our knees because of those bloody kids!’
‘Speak for yourself, Emerald. I am perfectly pert, thanks very much.’
‘Perfectly anorexic, you mean.’ Emerald leant over and honked Amber’s left breast. ‘How much foam is in that frickin’ thing?’
Amber slapped her hand away. ‘Get off me! You only have big tits because you’re overweight.’
‘At least I don’t starve myself to fit into size six pants, which are giving you a bad case of camel-toe, by the way.’
‘These are perfectly tailored designer trousers, I’ll have you know. Some of us make an effort. I mean, really, a long skirt and trainers? Is that appropriate work wear?’ She pointed at Emerald’s attire.
‘There’s a gym on board, Emmy. Or we can just get in shape by dancing the night away. The disco diet!’ I enthused.
‘I’m in shape . . . I do at least twenty sit-ups every morning, hitting the snooze button on the iPhone so I’m too late to go power-walking with my health-nut husband.’
‘Look, if it meant protecting our kids, we mums would contract a slow, flesh-eating bacteria that resulted in all our limbs falling off. But, having coddled, caressed and kissed bumps better for decades, tethered to the stove by our apron strings, it’s time we took a break from nurturing. Don’t you agree?’ I asked hopefully.
‘Oh, Ruby – my heart goes out to you.’ Amber wrung her manicured hands. ‘And I’m sending bad vibes to Kev. Down with Kev! Death to Kev! But I can’t go. I’m sorry. The kids need me so much right now.’
I deflated faster than the British economy post-Brexit, then turned to my other sister.
‘What about you, Emerald? Running your own veterinary clinic, at the bossy beck and call of our overbearing mother, two demanding kids – you must feel like a gymnast trying to balance on a beam. Surely you need a break?’ I thrust the cruise ticket towards my oldest sister.
‘Yeah, I do, but if I buggered off for three weeks at such short notice, Mum would kill me,’ Emerald sighed resignedly, pushing the ticket back across the table.
Amber’s eyes flared. ‘Once again, not the most sensitive analogy.’
‘Then just don’t tell Mum,’ I argued. ‘Negotiating with terrorists is pointless. Everybody knows that.’
‘But I can’t leave her. I’m her main carer.’
‘Clearly, where there’s a will, you’d really like to be in it,’ Amber said, coldly.
‘I resent that! I take care of Mum because somebody has to, and you’re too busy being mother of the bloody year.’
My stomach knotted. The will was a contentious point within our family as there was quite a bit of money involved. Our father was basically a tradie who made good thanks to the mining boom. He’d started out as a boilermaker but then began building those big metallic parts for diggers way out west. Although whenever he got into trouble with the cops, for speeding or drink driving, he’d give a twinkly wink and revert, saying ‘But I’m just a tradie, mate!’
‘Come on, girls,’ I placated, ‘we all do our share. But since giving up the booze, Mum’s never looked better. Surely she can take care of herself for three weeks?’
I pictured our matriarch. Aged eighty, she was so much more glamorous than any of her daughters. She sported better clothes, better hair – she’d been with her hairdresser for longer than she’d been married. Ruth’s social life had also always put her daughters’ to shame. The woman would only babysit if you booked her a millennia in advance, and even then nearly always cancelled because something faaabulous had come up.
‘Ignore the thought of what she will say. Our mother is good at emotional blackmail in the same way that a tornado is good at uprooting trees and hurling vehicles,’ I pointed out.
‘And, by the way, Emerald, you are not her main carer,’ Amber chipped in.
‘Then why am I top of her speed dial?’
‘Mum told me I’m at the top, actually.’
‘Stop it, both of you. Competing for our mother’s affections is pointless. She dislikes all three of us equally. We’re a huge disappointment. Look, I know Mum’s not all bad . . .’
Emerald stared at me incredulously. ‘That implies either short-term memory loss or a brain tumour,’ she surmised.
‘Once more, medical analogies? Really!’ Amber chided our older sister in a brittle voice. ‘But, Ruby, there’s no doubt that our mother is a gargoyle.’
‘It’s true, Rubes. She’d look perfectly at home perched on a flying buttress guarding a Gothic monastery . . . Which is exactly why I can’t spring this cruise idea on her. She’ll just morph into the Goddess of Wrath.’ Big, tough, capable Emerald quaked at the thought.
I knew what they meant. My heart gave a wrench of protective love. This was my chance to break my mother’s vice-like grip on my sisters. If I could convince them to escape her acrylic-nailed clutches, just this once, I felt sure they could learn how to be happy again. It was time to lay it on thick. Hell, it was time to get out the industrial-sized cement trowel.
‘My darling sisters. The cancer diagnosis has made me suddenly reassess everything.’ I was amazed at how good I’d become at lying in such a short time. I patted myself on the back, metaphorically. Then another cold wave of self-loathing hit me. In a spasm of guilt I made a quick mental list of all the people worse than me – Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Dick Cheney, that bastard who invented Spanx – then made another silent, sacred promise to confess the truth the minute I got my sisters aboard. But I just had to get them on that bloody boat first.
I grabbed hold of their hands. ‘A now-or-never feeling has taken hold of me. I can’t stop thinking about all the wonders of the world I’ve never glimpsed. The Great Wall of China. The Taj Mahal. Machu Picchu—’
‘Chris Hemsworth naked,’ Emerald reminded me, licking her lips.
‘Exactly. My brain is jumping from one missed opportunity to another. I’ve never skydived. Not that I want to . . . But I want to have the opportunity to at least chicken out of it at the last minute! I want to ride an elephant and swim with a whale. I want to learn astronomy and read the night sky. I haven’t seen the aurora borealis, let alone a solar eclipse. I’ve never read Proust. Or been in a threesome.’
‘Darl, you’ve never even played doubles at tennis!’ Emerald mocked.
My hangover was finally abating. I felt energised and determined. ‘Exactly. I want to have adventurous sex, say, in a broom cupboard – a broom cupboard aboard a scientific research ship heading to the South Pole.’
My sisters looked at me quizzically. I couldn’t blame them. I sounded weird even to my own ears, as if I were trying out someone else’s personality, someone much more feisty and fabulous than me. But maybe this was my true self, f
inally shining out from beneath the family bushel?
‘Look – when I was at school, I always thought I would take the world by storm. Well, weather experts have downgraded my career trajectory from “storm” to “light drizzle”. Do you remember when I won a place on that creative writing course and Mum said, “You? A writer? You don’t even know that a double negative is a complete no-no!” I just accepted her dismissal of the idea, like it was an edict from the Vatican. I should have taken that cadetship with the Herald, but Mum just gave me that smile that can burn five layers of skin off your face—’
‘Oh, I know that smile.’ Amber shivered.
‘—then she laughed and said, “You’re not exactly Ita Buttrose material, dear.” I could have finished that novel that’s been languishing in my drawer for decades . . . But there was always Mum’s negative voice ringing in my ears. “No matter how much you push the envelope, Ruby, you’ll still just be stationery.” Clearly I need a twelve-step program to break my low self-esteem habit. I mean, what am I? A fifty-year-old has-been hack on the local rag. Could have, would have, should have. Well, no more! This is my season of “Yes”. From now on, I’m going to eat carbs, I’m going to eat salt, I’m going to drink martinis. Today is the first day of the rest of my hedonistic life. I want people to say, “She died with her eyelashes on in her battle with Kev, that hairy aggressive pancreatic tumour dude.”’
I was talking such shit I could have qualified as a lifesaver at a sewage plant. But a little lie like this wasn’t a huge sin, was it? I wasn’t coveting my neighbour or taking a life or anything. A couple of Hail Marys on the way home should do it . . . Okay, more like a couple of decades’ worth of dedicated rosary-fondling. But it would be worth it if I could get my sisters aboard that cruise and patch things up between us.
‘Look, I didn’t just have a light-bulb moment yesterday, I had a blinding nuclear fusion flash. I don’t want to be a member of the exploited, exhausted, taken-for-granted mothers club anymore. Or put up with an unfaithful spouse . . .’
‘Has Harry confessed who he cheated with?’ Amber asked, cautiously.
‘No, the arsehole.’
‘Harry’s not an arsehole, he’s a regular ankle – three feet lower than an arsehole,’ Emerald decried in a gravelly undertone.
‘It’s just opened up an old wound. Remember when he cheated on me with Tracey Chapman in Year 12 and we broke up for two years? Maybe he’s a sexual kleptomaniac.’
Driving to the cafe an hour earlier, I’d rung Harry to say that unless he told me the truth about his affair, I was going on the cruise. His reply? ‘Make sure you have your inoculations before you go – inoculations against rednecks and bloody bogans.’ I’d been planning to tell him about the misdiagnosis, but his cool, condescending response made me think Why the hell should I? My irritation was now scratchy as sandpaper.
‘Screw Harry!’ I said. ‘This is about us. I don’t want to communicate with animals, angels, fairies, archangels, ascended masters, guides, stars or those who have crossed over. Nor do I want to fry myself with chemo and get tattooed eyebrows and a muff merkin.’
I cringed inwardly. The lies were just rolling off my tongue at this point. Obviously, I had a personality guaranteed to give a shrink wet dreams.
‘All I want to do is take a little bonding cruise with my dear sisters and reset our sibling compass before I cark it. Don’t you want to learn what turns you on as a person, rather than as a wife or mum? I don’t want to go screaming down memory lane thinking, Gee, these are shit memories! Do you?’
‘You are not going to cark it,’ Emerald said, emphatically. ‘We are going to fight this wretched Kev.’
For a moment all animation left my face. I couldn’t believe that both of my sisters, while solicitous, had refused my invitation point blank. It was insulting to think that, if I really did have cancer, they wouldn’t put their lives on hold for three measly weeks. I could feel a peeved frown puckering my forehead.
‘But you have to come with me. I’ve got cancer! How long do I have left?’ I started frantically fingering those mental rosary beads. In desperation, I began to cry. Not because I had cancer, but because I didn’t have it and had to keep pretending I did, and it still wasn’t enough to win over my warring sisters. Both of them immediately wrapped their arms around me.
‘Ruby, I’m so, so sorry you’re sick. But I can’t just bloody well drop everything. I’ll be here for you in every way I can: I’ll drive you to every appointment, but I have responsibilities – to Mum, to my clients. And to Alessandro. Now the kids are away at uni, he gets so lonely. If we don’t have sex every night, Sandro sulks. The man’s hung like a pachyderm, which means he gets MSB – maximum sperm build-up. Besides, you know that I never do anything spontaneous without a warning!’ Emerald concluded, trying for a note of levity.
‘And Scott would be at his wits’ end without me, too. His cases are so harrowing. He just doesn’t cope without my emotional support. I’ll cook wholesome food to build up your immunity, Ruby. I’ll massage unguents into your temples. But . . .’ Amber’s face flickered and tensed. All her eye make-up had washed away with her tears, leaving her looking young and vulnerable. ‘I can’t just abandon my family. Or Mum, for that matter. Not at such short notice.’
Defeated, I slumped back into my seat. Feeling the sludge of desolation in my heart, I signalled to the waiter and ordered a Bloody Mary. My hangover was back with a vengeance. I didn’t just need hair of the dog, I needed a whole canine pelt. ‘Oh, and hot chips,’ I added. My head had started thumping so badly I wanted to ask the woman at the next table to mute her knitting needles.
Emerald squeezed my hand. ‘Don’t be angry with me, Rubes – after all, I’m the one who’ll be plucking your chin hairs for you when you go into a coma.’
‘Emerald! Is that comment entirely necessary?’ Amber snapped, her eyebrows taut as an archer’s bow.
‘It’s okay, Amber. I’m not upset.’ I don’t even have cancer, I wanted to add, but said instead, sorrowfully, ‘You’re lucky that you’re both so happily married. Just promise me that one of you will always come to the hospital with those tweezers.’
I felt exhausted. No wonder – I’d been on my metaphorical toes for so long, I could’ve joined the corps de ballet.
‘We will,’ my sisters said, in another odd display of unity.
I sat there long after Emerald and Amber had dashed back to work. The nudging and jerks and winks and whispered asides of other customers were not lost on me. Even out here, at the very tip of the Insular Peninsular, it seemed word had got out about my bravura birthday meltdown. I felt like a balloon that had lost most of its air. What the hell would I do now?
One thing was for sure – when fate closes one door, it crushes your fingers in the hinges of another.
5
Later, when it was all over and the dust and drama of that summer had finally settled, Amber told me what happened post-lunch, after we parted that day. Let me draw the picture for you . . .
Amber’s life was like a giant jigsaw puzzle, with all the little pieces perfectly slotted together to match the coloured photo on the box marked ‘happy family’ and ‘successful working mother’. But timing and organisation were everything. The woman juggled so much she could be in the Cirque du Soleil. After our anguished meal at Convict Cafe, Amber had scurried back to her office to supervise the catering for three parties. They were one chef down, so she’d had to stay late dicing and slicing.
At least she’d prepared a beef bourguignon for the family’s evening meal before leaving for work that morning. At 5 pm she’d texted Scott to remind him to put the casserole dish in the oven at a low temperature so dinner would be gurgling away aromatically by the time she walked in the door at eight. Then it would just be a matter of steaming some greens, cleaning the kitchen, helping the kids with their homework, finding lost sports kits, putting the washing on, issuing some regulation nagging about flossing and digital detoxing, then falli
ng into a bath before bed. She often wondered if Scott noticed that she had two jobs, chief bread winner and chief bottle washer – a role she preferred to describe as ‘domestic engineer’ or ‘president of in-home pedagogy’, but which still boiled down to being a woman who was so busy she needed to employ staff to chew her food and have friends and fun on her behalf.
When Amber pulled her car into the driveway of her lovingly restored sandstone Federation home, framed by waratahs and wattle and other native flowers, in her mind she was already in her PJs, curled up around her book. If she got to bed before Scott finished working on whatever legal opinion was currently obsessing him, she could also avoid a carnal encounter. Despite what she’d said to her sisters and the image she projected to the world, Amber often feigned sleep so that she didn’t have to have sex with her priapic husband. Amber was far too polite and husband-pleasing to ever rebuff his advances. It wasn’t non-consensual, but nor was it sensual.
But if she couldn’t sidestep Scott’s advances, her plan B was to bring up every detumescing subject she could think of, from global warming to shower grouting to Korean nuclear proliferation, in the hope of deterring his ballistic missile. Maybe she could just wear her designer trousers to bed? The snug fit could prove to be an excellent contraceptive – once she got into them, they were nearly impossible to get off again. But, in fact, her family were about to provide the straw that would break the woman with the camel-toe’s back.
Amber could smell the fire the moment her key hit the lock. Skeins of thick, pungent smoke lay in the air. Groping her way by braille to the kitchen, she found the grill shooting flames and the casserole sitting, uncooked, in the oven. Scott had clearly turned on the grill by mistake before retreating back to his man cave at the bottom of the garden.